ALL OF THE MARVELS by Douglas Wolk (Penguin Press)
https://www.amazon.com/All-Marvels-Journey-Biggest-Story-ebook/dp/B08V8CVNK9/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1670678908&sr=1-1

All critics love having a thesis to grapple with, and if a critic were to, say, sit down and read all the Marvel superhero comics published from 1961 to the present day (more or less), what conclusions could they draw from that half-million or so pages worth of stories?

First of all, there's the idea that all of these comics add up to a decades-long epic at all, or a series of linked stories dependent on everything that's happened in this fictional universe before. (The reader is invited to join the great story-in-progress at any point.) Marvel Comics was the first superhero publisher to have a universe shared by all of its characters, just as it was the first to expand the straitlaced world of superhero comics by mashing them up with other popular comic book genres: teen humor, romance, and supernatural horror. (DC expended a lot of effort in following Marvel's lead.)

"Each company's [meaning Marvel's and DC's] superhero comics are collective histories of a fictional place that now has so much backstory attached to it that no one person knows it all," wrote critic Douglas Wolk in his 2007 essay collection, READING COMICS; now he's out to chart one of those collective histories in his latest book, ALL OF THE MARVELS (2021). It's both a nostalgia-fest and an attempt to escape from the bonds of nostalgia by trying to appreciate what Marvel Comics means to 21st century readers who aren't invested in memories of what was "great" about comics in the 20th century.

In Wolk's reckoning, the Marvel story is an ongoing serial about power and ethics, in a distorted but "true enough" reflection of the real world. His guide to the Marvel Universe has eight long, critically insightful chapters on the Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, Shang-Chi, Master of Kung Fu, the X-Men, Thor and Loki, the Black Panther, the "Dark Reign" crossover event (in which murderous sociopath Norman Osborne attains political power and uses it to neutralize all his superpowered opposition), and the Jonathan Hickman-penned Avengers/New Avengers epic (2013 - 2015) in which the Marvel Universe is destroyed, and everyone dies. Come to think of it, most of the characters discussed in the book aren't really superheroes at all: the FF are scientist/explorers, Shang-Chi's an action hero who both abhors and relies on violence, the Panther's a head of state, Thor's a role any worthy individual can play, and the X-Men are activists, symbols really, for anyone, anywhere, who's ever been made to feel like an outsider.

How do you follow all of that? With a ninth chapter on "young women, the audience that Marvel mostly forgot about or neglected for decades" (Perhaps what young people fear and hate most is being silenced, ignored, and having their identities erased), and the characters Squirrel Girl and Ms. Marvel, then a tenth chapter in which Wolk nervously invites his ten-year-old son to share his Marvel habit. After all, superhero comics aren't the exclusive property of aging boomers.

So what's the point? Maybe the Marvel saga holds up a pulp fiction mirror to its readers, and reflects this gnawing worry: We can do better. We can be better. It's not especially motivational, but it's better than the cheap, lazy cynicism of "nothing matters." Everyone has the power to change something -- perhaps even your own mind.